If Only
by Final Fantasy Princess
Summary: Oneshot. Love in the most beautiful and tragic form. SS


**If Only**

_By Final Fantasy Princess_

**Summary:** One-shot. Love in the most beautiful and tragic form. SS

She smiled.

I scowled.

She was one of a kind.

I was part of the crowd.

She brightened up the room.

I darkened people's days.

She loved me.

I never noticed her that way.

--

My heart throbbed. Here we go again. I stared openly because no one noticed. It was a huge party and the music was so loud I think I might go deaf. He was sitting across from me, a couple of feet away. In his lap, another whore was sitting. She was sucking on his neck while he was squeezing her ass. She was wearing a rag. (Was it allowed to be called a skirt?) Everyone could see her g-string and she couldn't care less. She was in the arms of the guy I love.

A guy next to me was trying to make a pass at me but I ignored him. I've ignored so many guys throughout the years of being Syaoran Li's best friend because they weren't worth my attention. He was. He was so sweet, gentle, caring, and considerate. The other guys were just assholes who wanted an easy lay.

I was still a virgin.

Now they were making out. I could see his tongue probe her mouth and her breasts eagerly pressing up against his chest. I don't know why I torture myself this way. Maybe it was some sort of perverse pleasure seeing my heart get torn to shreds day after day.

I'm too shy to tell Syaoran how I feel. He'd probably blow me off and our friendship would end. My friend Tomoyo would say that my mind was making up lies to dissuade me from telling him. The truth was that I wasn't Syaoran's best friend before. These other two sweet girls were. Both at separate times, of course.

The first one was his second cousin, Meiling Li. She loved him so much and was his friend since childhood. Her friend, Rika, advised her to confess to Syaoran her feelings for him. Meiling blushed and told her that Syaoran would never think of her in that way. Rika had said they had something together.

So Meiling confessed.

And Syaoran tossed her to the curb. Gently, of course. He told her he would never feel that way for her, she was like a younger sister to him, and she wasn't his type. The ironic thing about these harsh words was that Syaoran said them ever so sweetly, it almost didn't seem like an insult at all. Unless your heart was being torn in two… and your world stops.

The second girl was Ikioi Boen. She was the first cousin of Chiharu. She became the best friend of Syaoran two weeks after Meiling transferred to China. I was miserable when Meiling felt that she needed to transfer to begin to cope with her heartbreak. Anyway, Ikioi was a very bubbly girl. Who fell in love Syaoran long before she became his best friend. She confessed after she was secure about their friendship. He told her that it would never work. (She denied that.) He told her he loved her as a friend. (She refused to even think that he loved her less than a soul mate.) He ended it that maybe it would be better if they would go their separate ways. As in, no longer being friends either. (She transferred a week later.)

I thought they were hopeless romantics, falling in love with their best friend. I was a fool to think I wouldn't. I befriended Syaoran the natural way. I became his lab partner, we talked and hung out, we became friends, we spent countless hours together and became best friends.

Then I fell in love.

His smile would make my heart flutter and join the butterflies that were already flying around in my stomach. The way his face would lighten up when I walked into the room would sustain my happy mood for the day. I always felt that I was very important to him. But just not in the way I would like.

Back to the present. He was murmuring something in her ear and now they were heading upstairs. The skank. He was no better either. I didn't like this side of him. The charmer of all girls, the pimp. I chose to ignore that side of him.

But the way he looked at her, smiled warmly at the slut, and held her hand securely, I knew that he actually cared about the girl. He would never smile that way at me. It was the smile I labeled 'I like you more than a friend' smile. I should've gave up on him so long ago.

The guy who was pawing at me before left to another poor soul so I was alone again. The party was escalating and more people were crowding the room. I didn't really feel them. I was just sitting there pathetically while the guy I loved was upstairs grinding against a prostitute.

I got up to leave then. I pushed my way to the exit. I took a deep breathe and began to walk home. I wanted him. I guess I have to transfer now too…

Just as I was mapping out what I was going to do to fall out of love with him, I felt something sharp hit the back of my neck.

And then it went dark.

--

People say that best friends have this special connection where you could feel everything they felt or thought. It's bullshit. If I had this connection, I would've known what happened to Sakura and if she was still alive.

She was missing for five days. Police, volunteers, family, and friends were combing out the whole town trying to find any trace of her. The last place she was seen was at the party I was in. The funny thing was that I never saw her. Yamazaki told me she was sitting across from me the whole time, looking at me make out with Aya.

I felt bad that I never saw her.

I missed her so much. We would hang out all day, joking around and hitting each other playfully. She would give me advice when I needed it and when I didn't need it too. She would laugh and I felt so special that she chose to spend so much time with me. Sakura Kinomoto was very popular in our class. She was so sweet, shy, friendly, etc. People loved to be around her.

On the other hand, I wasn't that welcomed into the group. I usually scowled when someone approached me. I was a loner and people left me to be that way. Not Sakura. She knew my track record with the only two friends I had before. And yet, she was the best of all of them.

I stopped walking right then, in front of Penguin Park. I started crying. I hunched over by the slide and sobbed my heart out. I would've walked her home. I would've made her call me if I knew she was at that party. Some best friend I am. Now she's missing and no one has a clue.

My cell phone decided to ring then. It was the ring tone I put for Sakura. She was calling me! I picked up hurriedly.

It wasn't Sakura.

It was the head chief assigned to the case. They found her. Not the way I wanted them to find her.

She was raped and killed… buried in the damn bushes in a cemetery. She was bruised all over the place and she was alive when they violated her body. By the look of her hands, she had tried to fight back. She didn't win.

I was the first one to the scene since I was close by. I threw up when I saw her. My precious Sakura was gone. The bastard didn't even have the decency to leave some clothes on her.

One of the officers tried to take me away from the scene but I couldn't move. Sakura was a virgin. She was saving herself. She was a wonderful person. And she was gone just like that.

I never spoke to anyone through the whole arrangements of the memorial, wake, and funeral. I blankly stared at everyone. As they lowered her casket into the ground, I stood there with a solemn face. People tried to console me but I ignored them.

Tomoyo, her girl best friend, came up to me after everyone had left the burial site. We were the only ones there. She told me that Sakura loved me more than a friend. She was sitting across from me in the party because she was torturing herself in order to stop loving me. She left when I went upstairs with Aya.

If only I had noticed her at the party. If only I had noticed the feelings she had for me. I had to admit I never thought of her in that way before. But I realized I did love her more than a friend should.

Tomoyo told me she never said anything about her feelings for me because of my track record. I had rejected my former two best friends when they had said they loved me. But that's because I felt differently towards them.

Sakura… brightened up my day. She was always elated to see me. She would jump on top of me to greet me hello. She'd tease me until I was truly a tomato color. She listened to my problems attentively and offered her advice. She held me when I cried over my father's death.

She was my Sakura, my angel.

Tomoyo left me when I didn't say a word back to her. I stared at the freshly buried spot Sakura was resting in. I laid down next to her tombstone. Then I cried with no abandon.

They found the guy who did it a few days later. He was supposedly mentally unstable and was sent to a ward. He got off his rape charge. He was sentenced to life in the psych ward for his murder.

I wanted him to die.

I knew he was faking it. He didn't even look that crazy. He touched my Sakura. He **killed** my Sakura. He took her away from me. He took her away from the life she so rightly deserved.

So when they announced that sentence, I knew I had to take the matter into my own hands. I walked up calmly as the man hugged his lawyer, elated that he got off his charge. I raised the revolver I bought a day ago just in case justice failed. It did. I shot him in the head twice, his heart three times, and his private area once before someone tackled me to the ground.

I got him, Sakura.

And I love you, too.

--

Fin

Disclaimer: I do not own CCS.


End file.
